I'm lucky that my restaurant partners are my wife Liz and Doug Petkovic. We opened our first restaurant over 15 years ago. And we didn't open up our second restaurant for almost ten years. So that gave us a good foundation of employees.

People complain that chefs aren't at their restaurants anymore, but I don't think that's the case at all. You see them on TV and you assume they're not working but they are.

As a chef and someone who's been in the restaurant business for almost thirty years now, if there's one thing I learned early on: Never eat at a buffet. I don't want to eat yesterday's food and whatever they're trying to get rid of from their cooler for my lunch, dinner, or breakfast, thank you very much.

Go to the grocery store and buy better things. Buy quality, buy organic, buy natural, go to the farmers market. Immediately that's going to increase the quality of the food you make.

Because I'm so known as a meat-chef, when I talk about Meatless Monday some people look at me like I've lost my mind. I'm like, look, I'm not saying beef and pork is bad, I love it and I eat it six days a week.

Never let the pressure get so big that you stop cooking and being who you are. I'm going to win or lose doing my food. Because when the pressure's on, you need to do food that you're very comfortable with.

Chefs hate desserts. The smartest thing a chef can do is hire a great pastry chef. Cooking savory food is all about feel - you season something, you taste it, you go back in and adjust, more butter, more olive oil, more acid, whatever you want to get it to taste the way you want. Pastries are like a science project. To me, the greatest chefs are the ones who have the greatest feel for food, while the greatest pastry chefs have to be people that are extremely precise.